No Such Thing
by one.twilight.sun
Summary: Her Doctor is dying and his only hope lies on the other side of the Void. Would Rose risk the universe to save the man who would grow old with her?
1. chapter one

**chapter one**

It happens at her parents' anniversary party.

One moment, he's laughing and cracking jokes with Jake and the next he's writhing on the floor, clawing and gasping for his next breath. His eyes are wide, staring at nothing in particular, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish fallen out of its fishbowl.

Rose's head swivels at the startled cries and the sudden absence of the Doctor's voice. She is at his side in an instant, knocking down the champagne fountain in her sprint from across the room. She barely registers the crash of glass as the careful tower hits the ground.

Jake is on his knees next to the convulsing man, trying to pin down his arms and torso so he doesn't keep banging his head against the marble floor of the Tylers' ballroom.

"What happened? Was there an attack? Was he drinking something? Eating anything?" The questions come one after the next in a rapid-fire sequence. She doesn't even wait for a response as she turns to shout orders behind her. "I need a medic on the scene, _pronto_! Get Mickey and my father, tell them it's the Doctor! Secure the perimeter! No one goes in or out until I find out exactly what happened here!"

The members of her unit who are present get into motion immediately. The Special Ops team under Rose Tyler has been trained into following her orders blindly. Rose's instincts and intelligence have been proven right time and time again.

She sits on the ground, heedless of her dress' costly silk, and maneuvers his head into her lap. He doesn't react to her presence in any way and just continues to shake, spit coming out of his mouth.

She isn't going to cry.

She wipes the saliva away with the hem of her dress. TARDIS blue, just for him. "I'm here, darling. Rose is here," she says softly, knowing that her voice has brought him comfort in other desperate times. It seems to work now because as abruptly as he'd started shaking, he stops.

His body goes limp. His eyes fall close. He's so still that she's afraid he's dead. One shaking hand moves away from his head and down to his chest, over his single human heart. It's still beating. Faintly, but it's still there.

The heartbeat seems to shake her out of the shock she'd nearly slipped into. Her head whips up, blonde curls falling off her shoulder. "Where's the _GODDAMN __MEDIC!__"_

The crowd that's formed around them backs away at her roar. She sees her father and Mickey just breaking through the guests. Her eyes meet her dad's, the heart-stopping fear only revealed to him. He nods in understanding and pulls another body through behind him. Dr. Owen Harper rushes past her father with a medkit already open in his hands.

"What are the symptoms?" he asks as he kneels next to the still body of the Doctor. His stethoscope is in his ears, bioscanner running over the Doctor.

Jake relates what happened as Rose finds herself unable to answer, her entire being focused on keeping his chest rising and falling. She feels that as long as she _wills_ him to be alive, he will remain alive. She can feel a headache starting to form behind her eyes.

"His heart rate's a little under normal but stable. Blood pressure normal. Mild bruises on his body from the convulsions. No indication of virus, infection or poison," Owen lists off in his calm demeanor. He looks up at Rose and then to Pete. "But I'd like to move him to my sickbay so I can take a better look at his condition. There is no evident cause for his unconsciousness state at this point."

Pete nods, looking at Rose who doesn't disagree with him. They move him carefully using one of the foldaway tables that had been rented for the party. Rose insists on riding in the same vehicle with him, not willing to have him wake up without her there. She refuses to think about the other reason why she won't leave his side _(that __he __may __die __and __she __wouldn'__t __be __there_).

The minutes leading up to Torchwood One's sickbay is a blur to her. Owen and his staff have attached him to the deep-bioscan and are murmuring medical terminology amongst themselves.

Her father has to pry her fingers away from the Doctor's limp and slightly cold ones. She can't help the small cry at the separation. Pete puts an arm around his daughter who leans into him, her tear-filled eyes still unable to leave the Doctor's body.

It'd only been a little over a year that she'd had time to grow old with him. Why was he being taken away from her now? She fists a hand to her mouth and attempts to stifle the sobs that squeeze out of her throat. Owen glances at Pete who understands the look immediately and starts to lead Rose out of sickbay and into the waiting room outside.

"No!" She fights against his hold, not with the trained movements of a Torchwood agent, but with a desperation that is creeping over her.

"Rose," he shifts his arms so that he is holding her close to his chest so she can hear the rumble of his voice. It was the voice of reason in the years before she found her Doctor again and it had the same effect now in the chaos of her mind. "Rose, honey. You've got to let them work. We'll be right outside."

She stops fighting him and lets herself be led out but not before she has one last glance at the Doctor lying on the medical bed, lying as still as death.

**author's note: Inspired by 0RainbowProductions video on YouTube called "Try Anything". Check it out! **

**This is going to be a longer chaptered fic than I've done for the Doctor Who universe so wish me luck because it's always with a little trepidation I approach doing longer stories. I fear that my attention span doesn't last long :/**


	2. chapter two

**Author's Note: So I think this is going to be about 7 or 8 chapters long. If you haven't yet checked out the video that this is based off of on YouTube 0RainbowProductions "Try Anything". Thank you to all who have reviewed so far. Let me know what you think about this chapter!**

**Two.**

She sits in the chair right next to his bed, staring at his pale face. Owen says that all that can be done at the moment is to let him remain asleep, hooked up to the various intravenous feeds and beeping machines to monitor his condition. Owen and his staff are running the results of the tests through their lab.

Her own team has come and gone. No unknown elements had been present at the party. All guests had been accounted for. The food and beverages had been checked and found clean. She ordered them to go back to the Tyler mansion and go over every inch with every scanning device Torchwood possessed. They had better be damn sure that there hadn't been some virus, substance or alien present at the time of the Doctor's collapse.

She's been waiting since then. The Doctor has been out the whole night and she can see the edges of dawn filtering in through the white curtains of the too white room. She decides that it's the utter lack of color in the room that makes him look near death. Bending over, she rips a strip from the bottom of her dress, utterly uncaring of the expensive material. Straightening, she lays the blue silk next to his still form.

It doesn't make him look more alive. In fact, he looks worse. She removes the cloth with a choked back sob, dropping it to the floor, far away from him. She takes his hand in hers and remembers that long ago Christmas when she'd first seen this face. He'd not been aware of the world then either.

Her mind flits over the memories since that day. Of all the adventures in time and space she had with that regeneration, the soul-tearing separation at Torchwood One in the home universe and the single-mindedness with which she'd searched for that Doctor. She'd thought that when she found him, she would be able to live the rest of her days with him on the TARDIS, growing old and eventually passing, leaving him to find a new friend, a new love and to somehow continue living.

She hadn't expected to be back in her parallel world with her very own Doctor who would live out the rest of his days with her, growing old with her. She'd resented him and the original Doctor those first weeks after Bad Wolf Bay. She regrets the precious time she wasted torn between wanting to tear apart the universe again to find her original Doctor and somehow accepting this new new _new _Doctor. He'd looked at her—on that day where the breaches in the Void were being filled—he'd looked at her as if she was the center of his universe.

She'd never gotten that look from the old Doctor. She always felt it was there, but he could never open himself up to her the way her Doctor had. And so she'd chosen. She'd known that day who she'd be with; it was ridiculous that she even remotely had any conflict following that day.

But she had been conflicted and she'd lost just that many days to be happier than she'd ever been. Because she had been happy with this Doctor. Her tears start up again and blindly she reaches for his hand. She wanted to live the rest of her life with this man. She didn't want him to die. If anything, _she _was the one who was supposed to go first.

The tears fall and she sits in silence, staring at their joined hands. She can't look at his face anymore. Without the animation that he provides it, the features are too austere, too serious to be comfortably faced and so she memorizes how their hands join together. She counts the freckles along the back of his hand that she knows runs up his arm and across his chest. She's spent nights attempting to count the amount of freckles on his body. She never gets to finish because she does the counting with her tongue and the Doctor is one tasty man.

Her mind goes back to that other time when she watched this man sleep a deep sleep. Just as she doesn't understand it now, she hadn't understood it then. He'd only woken up when she'd really needed him. When something had been trying to kill her. She wonders if talking to him now, with this aching need to see him awake and hear his non-stop babbling, will get him to wake up.

She leans over him, bringing her mouth next to his ear, her blonde hair falling forward, creating a curtain around them.

"Doctor, wake up," she says firmly. She knows that if he were awake, he'd laugh at the fact that she seemed to be giving him an order. Most times he likes it, just because it's her, Rose Tyler, ordering him about.

There is no change in his even and deep breathing.

She lightly shakes his shoulder. It isn't like she hasn't tried that earlier than now but she felt that it's always good to keep trying to do something. She's currently at a loss and the tears are streaming down her face again, silently and she doesn't even bother to wipe them away at this point.

He isn't waking up.

Defeated, she lets her head fall next to his, even though her body is stretched at an odd angle. "Doctor," she whispers, one finger tracing the stubble along his jaw. His other body didn't grow facial hair. "Doctor, I need you," she can't help the note of despair in her voice. She closes her eyes, so tired.

But she's jerked awake in the next moment because he's opened his eyes and sat straight up, her name on his lips. "Rose!"

She stands up so fast that her chair is knocked over and she almost falls over him. She catches herself on the rails next to his bed. He turns to her, intensity in his dark gaze and grabs her by her shoulders, bringing her face next to his. She doesn't even get an opportunity to smile or kiss him before he's talking again.

"He's dying, Rose. He's regenerating and I'm not—" he stops mid sentence, head suddenly falling back so his face is towards the ceiling. He seems to be choking on something and she watches as gold particles fly out of his mouth in one wispy tendril. Her heart stops beating as she watches it fly up into the air and fade.

She has to scramble to catch the Doctor as he collapses once more, his body going through the convulsions he was having the night before. She throws her weight across his chest, trying to prevent him from falling or hitting himself.

"_OWEN!"_ she screams, having long ago given up any semblance of sanity in the face of possible loss. _"OWEN!"_

The Doctor's body jerks back and forth, up and down, in some morbid dance and this time it doesn't seem like he is going to stop.


End file.
